Update Week 5 Flower:
OK, I apologize for no pictures. I am waiting on a magnifier so I can begin uploads some closer up pictures.
-I left a lot of leaf on these girls after getting mixed answers about should I or should I not prune during flowering. Looking at the results I am seeing, I think it would have been better to have pruned 2-3 weeks ago as now there are way too many fan leaves.
My thinking was that I do not want to remove all this veg because it is food the plant will need during flowering.
-My buds are going to be small for the most part. I have seen enough pics to know this. I am not disappointed however, I am actually encouraged. That means there is just that much more room for refinement.
-There are about 12 colas on one plant and 8 colas on the other. They are all similar in size with a 2-3 being a bit larger, brobably big enough to produce buds in the 3-7 inch range, I definetly believe it is because they are seeing the most light. So, while I did do a good job with LST and FIM to get a great number of flowering sites on my girls, I do think I got a little overzealous for the amount of space I was working with. My girls are literally withing 5 inches of my lamps. And you can tell with the tips of the leaves beginning to look like they are burnt.
*Note for next grow, less is more strategy, 1 plant with a little more LST so it says shorter but wider, or I need to veg earlier and control how many colas I end up with. Also prune earlier. The first 2-3 weeks of flower are like Veg growth but on steroids so you do not need to have so many fan leaves going into flowering.
-I have let the root rot go on too long and I believe this to be a contributing factor in the smaller flowers. Because this is a someone concealed grow, I have not been checking these girls daily. By that I mean PH, EC, and overall maintainence of this setup. There was way too much buildup of salts, dead roots, and squishy roots. I think I let it get away from me and damaged quite a lot of the healthy roots I worked hard at maintaining during Veg, my lax mainainence during the beginning stages of flowering have led to a lot of the plants energy to be directed into repair rather than into building up big beautiful flowers.
-I did go ahead and clean these buckets out, there was a ton of salt build up as well as quite a bit of dead root material in the bottom of each of the containers. The roots are not as healthy as I want them but I predict they should be well enough to get me through this grow. Especially with the liberal application of hydroguard.
-It is hard to see but orange hairs are starting to develop and the leaves near the buds are beginning to sugar over with trichomes on both plants now.
-Smelling these girls neither are very pungent smelling , but that has a lot to do with genetics, thank god for that, but both have a beautiful good quality weed smell to them. By this I mean both smell exactly what good weed smells like, it has a pungent smell hit you in the face smell but not the kind of wee you need to triple bag and put into a mason jar kind of smell. And that is good for me being a concealed grow.
-While I was shooting for that fire bud, I realize now how difficult it is to keep things concealed, maintain more than 1 plant at a time. I am predicting now that if I keep everything under control from here on out I should end up with some very good mids. Again I am far from discouraged. If anything it just means there is a lot of room for refinement and improvement here.
-Also I realize my pictures are crap. I read other journals too and they know how to take beautiful pictures with lighting. I am going to be working on this.
-My overall assessment of my situation, if I had to grade myself, I would probably get a C+, B-. I think I will end up with some pretty decent mid grade. While I likely am not going to see these buds explode in size all the sudden I do expect them to fill out quite a bit more. And based on where I am at I should see quite a few 2-3 inch nugs combined with a lot of smaller popcorn buds. I mean 20+ small colas of similar size should produce around 20 2-3 inch nugs by the way it is looking. Combine that with all the popcorn buds towards the middle, and the 2-3 larger buds in the 5-7 inch range and I quite honestly see this as quite a success. While I cannot claim it to be amazing I will claim it to be a success.
-Anyways. Per my last update I went ahead and cleaned up everything, I removed a couple of very lower flowering branches that were only about 7 inches tall, they were far from the light that had no chance but to but to be anything more than popcorn buds, I removed them in hopes the energy will be directed upwards on those colas and produce bigger buds near the tops. I also cleaned the buckets out, I was careful to not be to rough while moving things around.
-Some things I noticed is how stiff the branches become during flowering, that is not good because I allowed these ladies to get too tall. There is no way I am going to be bending these girls now in this stage of flowering to make room my best chance if I do not want them to get heat stress or sunburn is to possibly rotate these girls every other day. I possibly can do a little LST but overall it does not look good.
-My last note is that I think these girls have 3-4 weeks left. I have a Jewelers Loupe coming via amazon and will be getting a better look at when to harvest. With that, once I get the magnifier to take a closer look at the trichomes I will get a better idea of when I should start flushing. Based on genetics I should begin flushing next week Tuesday. I am seeing orange hairs but to me it still looks a little early. Perhaps 1 week will change my mind. Afterall 3 days ago my one girl was not even producing trichomes. Now she has as much as my other girl who has been producing trichromes for now going on a week.
As you can see the tips are burning a little. I suspect it is because of the light being so close as well as the ph an nutrient imbalance going on. As I said I went ahead and fixed the ph and nutrient imbalance. I also turned the plants so these particular buds are a bit further from the light.
